Today in London, the Natural Capital Coalition (NCC) launched the world's first standardized Natural Capital Protocol (NCP) for business.

The NCP is a new framework to help businesses measure and value the natural resources which are the foundation of economic activity. All business decision making relies on financial information. But traditional accounting mostly fails to consider a company's impacts and dependancies on nature. This new protocol will help businesses systematically integrate their relationships with nature into their core strategy and operation, and producing positive environmental benefits.

Sustainable management of our natural resources is critical if we are to overcome the growing global challenges of pollution, climate change, resource scarcity, bio-diversity loss and environmental degradation. The NCP will help companies do just this. As well as improving environmental performance and ensuring sustainable economic growth, the new protocol can help companies to better manage risks in their supply chains, reduce costs, increase efficiency, and find opportunities to innovate. The NCP was developed by a coalition of 38 organisations, including, WBCSD, IUCN and The B Team, with hundreds of others consulted. The protocol has been piloted and feed into by more than 80 companies, representing 15 industry sectors and seven geographical regions. The protocol for generating, trusted, credible and actionable information around natural capital impacts and dependencies associated with a business operations is now freely available to all business leaders.

You can explore the new protocol and learn more here.